“Hospital errors result in the death of nearly 200,000 Americans every year,” said New York wrongful death lawyer Michael A. Bottar, Esq. In an effort to improve patient care, and to attract more doctors, upgrade its information/technology systems and stabilize its finances, Community Memorial Hospital, located at 150 Broad Street in Hamilton, New York, just minutes from Colgate University, will soon link to Syracuse’s Crouse Hospital.
CMH is a 40-bed hospital where approximately 5,000 procedures were performed in 2009 and 2010. Most of those procedures (more than 4,000) were diagnostic or therapeutic in nature. Since 2005, CMH has been investigated twelves times by the New York State Department of Health. According to the NYSDOH website, eight investigations resulted in no citations. However, four investigations resulted in a total of 33 citations including statement(s) of deficiency for, e.g., infection control, anesthesia services, pharmaceutical services, quality of care, supervision of nursing care, nursing services, medical staff and incident reporting.
Hospital officials noted that the Crouse-CMH affiliation is not a merger or asset acquisition like the recent transaction between Syracuse’s Community General Hospital and Upstate Medical University. According to Syracuse.com, Dr. Paul Kronenberg, Crouse’s president and CEO, noted that “the affiliation with Community Memorial is part of Crouse’s strategy to develop an integrated delivery network and expand its geographic reach.”
Hospital affiliations, or a link between a small hospital and a large hospital, are one way to decrease hospital negligence leading to New York medical malpractice lawsuits for personal injury and wrongful death. Where these arrangements function correctly, the smaller hospital is able to draw upon the knowledge and resources of the larger institution and prevent harm to patients from, e.g., surgical errors, prescription medication errors, emergency room mistakes and misdiagnosis or the failure to diagnose.